The Training Ground (19 page)

On the right side of Garland’s advance, the regulars pressed on, advancing slowly toward the city walls. La Tenería rose to their left and the Black Fort to the right. The plan was for Garland to make his way into the city and then meet up with Major Mansfield, Taylor’s superscout, who would have sneaked into Monterrey to conduct yet another reconnaissance. Mansfield would help lead the way through the maze of streets so that they might attack La Tenería from the rear.

Grant arrived in the small depression behind Taylor’s big guns. He was on horseback, still studying the battle as a passive observer. He could hear gunfire from inside the city as Garland’s men began a series of street battles on their way to La Tenería. Reinforcements were clearly needed. Taylor decided on a two-pronged response: the Third Division, which included Jefferson Davis and the Mississippi Rifles, would charge directly at La Tenería, and Grant’s Fourth Infantry would simultaneously rush forward to reinforce Garland. “I had been there but a short time when an order to charge was given,” Grant noted. “Lacking the moral courage to return to camp — where I had been ordered to stay — I charged with the regiment.”

So it was that Sam Grant and Jeff Davis rode into battle together.

“As soon as the troops were out of the depression they came under fire from the Black Fort,” Grant wrote. The Fourth was totally exposed, with no place to take cover on the flat plain. The Mississippi Rifles and the First Tennessee were farther to the left, temporarily screened from the Black Fort’s guns. “As they advanced they got under fire from batteries guarding the east, or lower, end of the city, and musketry. About one-third of the men engaged in the charge were killed or wounded in the space of a few minutes.”

The losses were horrendous, with hundreds of American bodies maimed and pierced by a relentless stream of flying metal — rounds of grape and canister musket balls and pulverizing barrages from the Black Fort’s eighteen-pounders. “We were being
enfiladed,
” one astonished Maryland volunteer would later write, choosing a chilling military term that described troops’ being exposed to gunfire along the entire length of their formation. It was slaughter — and for the first time in the war, Americans were on the receiving end.

Grant and the Fourth retreated to get out of range, moving parallel to the city walls instead of fleeing backward. “When we got to the place of safety the regiment halted and drew itself together — what was left of it.” In the midst of it all, he thought of his dearest Julia and his love for her.

Grant was one of the few saddled members of the Fourth; even the regimental adjutant, First Lieutenant Charles Hoskins, was on foot. The thirty-two-year-old Hoskins was an 1836 graduate of West Point who had spent much of his career in frontier outposts such as Kansas and Oklahoma. Grant had known him since their time at the Jefferson Barracks. Not only did Hoskins outrank Grant and carry the regimental colors, but he was also in poor health. Grant offered up his horse. Hoskins graciously accepted, not bothering to command Grant to return to Walnut Springs or even register surprise that his regimental quartermaster was in the thick of the charge instead of tending to the company mules. It was understood that Grant would remain at the front.

Desperate to be mounted when the next charge came, Grant scrambled to find a horse. He “saw a soldier, a quartermaster’s man, mounted not far away. I ran to him, took his horse and was back with the regiment in a few minutes. In a short time we were off again; and the next place of safety I can remember being in was a field of cane or corn to the northeast of the lower batteries.” Hoskins — and Grant’s original horse — were nowhere to be seen, and the lieutenant soon learned why. “The adjutant to whom I had loaned my horse was killed, and I was designated to act in his place.”

Temporarily at least, Grant was no longer a quartermaster. With the Fourth now having lost a third of its officers and men, he was responsible for carrying the regimental colors into Monterrey.

It was shortly before eleven in the morning as the Fourth rested up for the next charge, finding relative comfort and cover in the shelter of some low houses on the edge of town. They could hear the musket fire as the First Mississippi, off to the far left, stormed the bastion at La Tenería. Mexican general Mejía had just reinforced the former tannery with 140 more light infantry and an additional cannon.

Davis was on foot. The high-strung Tartar was safely back at Walnut Springs with Davis’s longtime slave Jim Green. Three hundred yards out, the First Mississippi came under attack and took cover to return fire. Davis’s men were flustered by the brand-new experience of having men shoot at them, and it showed most of all in their marksmanship. Despite the Whitney rifles’ superior range, the First Mississippi’s bullets weren’t killing any Mexicans. “Damn it,” Davis griped to one of his officers, pacing back and forth behind his lines, “why do not the men get nearer to the fort? Why waste ammunition from such a great distance?” But it was not the gap between the Mississippi volunteers and their enemy that was the problem: Davis’s regiment was “seeing the elephant,” as American soldiers described that first overwhelming whoosh of combat. They were not turning in panic, as most of the Maryland and District of Columbia volunteers had during Garland’s attack, but they were also too timid to press the battle.

Davis was so sentimental that he sealed letters to Varina with a kiss, but on the battlefield he swore a blue streak, despite having repeatedly promised his wife that he would quit using profanity. Now he screamed at the Rifles to move forward, each well-chosen word designed to terrify and motivate even the most timid planter or banker-cum-soldier. The First Mississippi heeded his command until, 180 yards from the fort, they threw their bodies to the ground once again, pinned down by Mexican fire. “ Now is the time,” Davis fumed. “Great God, if I had thirty men with knives I could take that fort.”

The First Tennessee was to their right. Together they made an imposing force, but they had to act immediately.

The guns of La Tenería went inexplicably quiet at that very moment. When the Third Division commander General Quitman was slow to issue fresh orders, redheaded Lieutenant Colonel Alexander McClung of Mississippi’s Company K took matters into his own hands. With a cry of “Charge!” McClung impulsively rushed to the fort, waving his saber. Davis and the First Mississippi rose as one and sprinted behind him, heedless of the fact that their rifles lacked the bayonets necessary for the close-quarters fighting that surely awaited those lucky enough to make it over the walls.

Quitman hastily ordered the First Tennessee — whose muskets
did
possess bayonets — to do the same. Letting loose with a piercing battle cry of their own, they sprinted straight at La Tenería. The fort’s guns opened fire, barking musket balls and grape at the frenzied Americans. In seconds the landscape was splattered with blood, bones, and brains, and so many of the First Tennessee died that forever after they were known as the Bloody First. McClung clambered up the fort’s rampart and waved his sword to encourage the troops. Davis was close behind. Spying a nearby sally port (a small opening through which the defenders could enter and exit unobtrusively), Davis burst into La Tenería. He was the second man into the fort — but far from the last. American volunteers surged over walls and squeezed through openings, anything to find a way into La Tenería. McClung was felled by a musket ball that tore through his left hand, entered his torso at the hip, and exited at his spine. He would live, though only after being wrapped in a blanket and hidden in a culvert until the battle for La Tenería was through.

Which it soon was. Thanks, in part, to Davis’s bravery and gallant leadership, the Americans soon controlled the fortress.

It was noon. The commander of the Mississippi Rifles had officially made a name for himself — but his wartime heroics were far from over.

F
ARTHER TO THE
right, Colonel Garland and an injured Major Mansfield were leading a frantic retreat from the outskirts of Monterrey. Those city streets had initially been a sanctuary after the nonstop hail of bullets during their long charge across the plain. The soldiers’ chests had heaved from the dash, sweat flecking their foreheads and darkening the blue armpits of their tunics — yet they had felt deeply elated to still be alive. The euphoria soon wore off. The Americans were new to street fighting and quickly made the fatal mistake of maintaining column formation — that is, marching rank and file in straight, orderly lines — as they crept through the unfamiliar lanes. But the wide-open dirt streets offered no cover. The Mexicans fired down on Garland’s troops from rooftops and secret gun emplacements, popped up suddenly from behind low stone walls, blasted point-blank rounds of grape from perfectly camouflaged cannons, and blocked many of the streets with heaps of wood and dry brush to better contain the Americans.

Once it became clear that Garland and Mansfield would be unable to navigate the streets without additional firepower, Lieutenant Braxton Bragg and his mobile artillery were summoned to break the bottleneck. Yet Bragg’s usually nimble six-pounders presented problems all their own. Their small shells proved laughably ineffective, literally bouncing off the four-foot-thick stone walls protecting the Mexican gunners. Making matters worse, Mexican cannons quickly cut down ten of Bragg’s artillerymen and a dozen horses.

In tragically comic fashion, when the order to retreat — “retire in good order” — was called, the city streets proved too narrow for Bragg’s cannons to be turned around while harnessed to a horse. Garland’s embattled infantry had to save the day by manually lifting and pivoting each gun — no small feat, considering that a single cannon weighed 880 pounds.

Mansfield had been shot through the calf, but with a white handkerchief wrapped around the bloody bullet entry, he led the way out of town. Infantry soldiers ran close behind, and Bragg’s horse-drawn cannons trailed in their wake, taking “the streets by which we had entered — there was no difficulty in finding our route, for it was painfully marked,” said one officer, since almost half of Garland’s men lay dead or dying along Monterrey’s suddenly terrifying streets.

T
HE AMERICAN ARMY
was having far more success atop La Federación. The hill featured two prominent fortified heights, and these had to be taken one at a time. The first one was captured early in the afternoon, just as Garland’s men were blundering through Monterrey. “When we were at the top of the hill, we saw right before us and a little lower than we their second height. There was a stone fort on it, and the top of the hill was covered with large tents,” Dana wrote, remembering the triumph. “We were flushed with victory. A tremendous shouting and yelling was raised and all cried out, ‘Forward!’ The sight was too tempting and we must have the second hill before sunset.”

The Americans took fire from a Mexican nine-pounder as they swarmed the small redoubt. “We routed them from their fort. They fled like good fellows, scarcely stopping to look behind once,” wrote Dana. “We placed our colors on the hills and cheered like real Americans.”

Cannon fire from the Bishop’s Palace atop La Independencia ended the celebration. Shells landed uncomfortably close to the American troops, kicking up dirt and spraying splinters of rock. As if Worth’s men needed another reminder, it was clear that capturing La Federación was tactically meaningless if the Americans did not also claim its sister hilltop of La Independencia. As long as the Mexicans held that bit of high ground, the American advance would be in jeopardy.

A
S C. F. SMITH’S MEN
were capturing La Federación, Grant and the Fourth crept into Monterrey, hoping to capture Fort Diablo, a small fortification five hundred yards southwest of La Tenería, defended by more than a hundred Mexican soldiers under the command of Colonel Ignacio Joaquín del Arenal. El Fortín del Rincón del Diablo rested on a long ridge above the Río Santa Catarina, anchoring the left side of the Mexican lines. Capturing El Diablo would give American forces tentative control of Monterrey’s perimeter.

Once inside the city, the Americans were again driven back by point-blank canister rounds. Comrades were blasted into red and left sprawled, dead and maimed, on the streets. The brigade was horrified. “The slaughter here was terrific; ten of our gallant officers fell to rise no more, and some ten others were wounded, some beyond the hope of recovery. The two regiments constituting the brigade were literally cut to pieces,” one officer wrote. Taylor ordered that all American forces retreat from the city. The dead and wounded were left behind.

The only American toehold inside Monterrey was La Tenería. Davis’s Mississippi Rifles remained there with Bloody First Tennessee, awaiting further orders. Captain Randolph Ridgely, Taylor’s top artillery specialist, had made his way to them and was repositioning the captured Mexican cannons. They would be aimed no longer toward the American lines but into the city itself, at the Mexican army.

When the First Mississippi and First Tennessee were finally relieved and allowed to march back across the plain to the siege guns, a weary but elated Davis was content to travel at the rear of the column, with the wounded and the feeble. As they trudged through a cornfield lined with chaparral, Mexican lancers leaped their horses over the thorny berm and “commenced slaughtering stragglers and wounded men,” in the words of one witness. A voice soon cried out above the chaos — it was Davis, forming his men into a line and shouting for them to take careful aim. His quick action drove away the lancers and saved countless American lives.

Later that night, Grant ventured alone back out onto the battlefield to search for his friends among the dead. Taylor’s army had suffered 394 wounded and killed that day, a figure that equaled more than one-tenth of the men who saw battle — and almost twice as many casualties as Ampudia. Grant’s dear pal Robert Hazlitt had been among the killed. As he searched for the body, a wounded soldier cried out to him. Grant tended to the man with water from his canteen, gently washing grime from the soldier’s face with his handkerchief. Wooden ambulance wagons would be along in the morning to collect the soldiers of both sides. Should he make it through the night, that wounded man would be carefully lifted inside and carted back over painfully bumpy ground to a primitive field hospital. Grant offered what comfort and hope he could, knowing that the man faced a long, cold night out in the open.